She was best in the flickering light of a movie theater, our faces turned away from each other, our hands following their own course downward. She fumbled her way from the top button of my shirt collar to my skirt, parting its damp folds with her hands. She coaxed me, with whispers, with small noises, as if she were begging a dog out of the road. Our eyes never left the screen. We stared at the narrow ribbon of flesh between Ingrid Bergman's halter top and the waist of her palazzo pants, that one inch of her enlarged on the dust-speckled screen. 

We were fifteen when we met in Sister Bartholomew¹s English class, my desk pressed up against the back of her chair. Sister¹s habit caught in the late-summer breeze from a low window in the first floor classroom at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow School for Girls. As she turned away to adjust its tight band at her neck, the girl in front of me tilted her head back. A strand of her strawberry-blond hair fell between the open clasps of my binder as I snapped the metal fasteners shut. The straggled ends caught there, pulled taut between the pages of my notes, she gasped. I curled that long strand around my finger, kissed it and released her. Christ stared down from his station on the powder blue wall, his loincloth slipping.

The next year she cut it off with her mother¹s kitchen scissors. Her shorn hair fell in kinky strands over her father¹s shaving brush, her older sister¹s neat zip bag of eye shadows, the opaque whiteness of Pond¹s Cold Cream jars.

"Do you like old movies?" She asked, one hand following the line of her cropped hair along the dome of her head, the other hooked into the clasp at my locker¹s handle.

"I don¹t know," I said.

School books pressed against my chest, my hip slung out, I leaned into the locker¹s cool metal surface. All I knew was that I wanted to press closer to her than I thought was possible, that my clothes felt too small in her presence and my skin itched with an ardent, heated rash as if I were allergic to my uniform dress, its soft weight against my breasts, the skirt falling in even, pleated lines over my thighs. In the balcony of the old Tower Theater on East Avenue, across from the glass-walled Cadillac dealership, catty corner from King Prince¹s diner on a crisp November afternoon she showed me the old movies. Notorious: Ingrid Bergman. Carey Grant. Brazil. 1946.

The theater swelled with the odor of mildewed carpets and moth-worn upholstery. The ancient hinges of the seat bottoms whined as they yielded to our weight. My hands wrapped around some iced drink, my mouth poised on the sharp edge of a straw, we abandoned our school bags to the dark recessed of the littered floor. 

Even before the opening titles finished, she moved her thigh up against mine, let her left hand fall across my knee. With her right, she caressed my mouth, ran an ink-stained thumb over my chin. Her fingertips rested in the small dip at the base of my neck. Our eyes darting across the lighted screen, her hands traveled from the rounded Peter Pan collar of my blouse. The small buttons, pearlized, caught in the screen¹s dim light, glowed beneath her fingers.

One button at a time, she moved my blouse out of the way and whispered in the darkness, "Please, please, please." 

Her mouth, hovered above mine. That even, repeated tone on her breath, the words were barely audible. Over and over she said it to Ingrid Bergman, to Carey Grant, to the tiny floor lights that led us into the darkness.

She found her way from the flat disk around my nipple to its rising tip, ran her middle finger along each rib. Then her hand paused at to the white edge of my underpants. Traveling the circumference of that worn elastic waste-band, she played along that edge till she got up the courage to pull me to her. One arm around my shoulders guiding me over, she settled me between her thighs. My back curved into her chest. Our eyes fixed on Ingrid Bergman¹s full mouth, her hand slid down further, squirreling in between the worn elastic of my underpants and the untraveled skin below. 

When she entered me I gasped. The couple in front of us stirred, the man, his brush cut tickling his girlfriend¹s cheek, turned around and squinted back into the shadowy dark. She put one finger in, then pulled it out, returned with two fingers. She pulled out again. I followed her fingers down as they left me. She returned with three, stretching the untried muscles, her thumb on the outer rim.

I knew nothing of the wetness. I had never heard of it before, never felt such a rush of it. I thought it was menstrual blood, my period come early, or a kind of internal bleeding, her hand at the sight of the wound, cutting in. I filled her palm with it, spilled over, rivering into the narrow line between my buttocks, pooling on the cracked, leather seat. Her uniform skirt gone damp, its even pleats wrinkling under us, she added and subtracted her fingers into me. Three, two, one. One, two three. Working faster, she matched her rhythm to the increasing speed of my breath. All the while her small whisper continued, like a ticking clock at my ear, "Please, please, please."

As her thumb traveled to my clitoris, running over that elongated spot with a flickering exactitude. I arched into her hands. My breath came hard. Then, as if something were caught in my throat, for one long moment I could not breathe. I felt something buzz around me, something almost tangible, a cloud hovering over me, waiting to descend. As Ingrid Bergman leaned over to the airplane¹s small window, her lips parting, the Brazilian landscape opening out beneath her, I came for the first time.

It¹s five years later, it¹s seven, it¹s ten and still when I walk into a theater I walk into her. My scalp tingles, my hamstrings contract. The air close around me opens up to her form. The worn wood of the seat arm softens into the edge of her biceps. Already her thigh presses tight against mine. Already she is descending on me, her mouth at my ear, her hand between my legs, the fingers adding and subtracting into me. One two three. Three two one. I arch back, spread my legs wider. There in a high corner of the balcony, the safety bar cutting the screen in half, dividing Ingrid Berman at that flash of white skin, I remember the mottled and flickering light on my classmate¹s face. Ingrid Bergman floats out of the screen, her mouth on the lip of my mind, the edge of that white abdomen, that narrow ribbon of flesh flashes like a rope, a road, a signal light in the half-empty darkness. 

Copyright © 1999-2002 Alison Smith. All Rights Reserved. May not be re-printed in any form without express written consent of the author. Do not copy or post. "Notorious" first appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica 1999 (Cleis Press).